Why Chinese Hate Their Men’s Soccer Team

The mostly empty hotel lobby that greeted the team on June
12 when it checked in before a game against Thailand was one
measure -- especially in a country where national athletes, even
in minor sports, receive adoring attention from fans. The many
bare seats at the stadium in Hefei where the game was played on
June 15 were another sign. But perhaps the biggest display of
disdain followed the Chinese squad’s 5-1 loss to a team that had
replaced seven members of its roster with youth players. A
sizable number of fans found their way down to the team bus and
blocked it from leaving while chanting furiously, sometimes
obscenely, about the coach, the team and the human anatomy they
all resemble. A riot ensued, injuring at least 100 people,
according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human
Rights and Democracy.

Online, Chinese fans found virtual analogues to the parking
area. Before the first half of the game was over (25 minutes in,
China was down 2-0), angry comments began trending on Sina
Weibo, the leading social-media platform. By the final whistle,
fans started posting furious comments to the apology -- “Sorry!”
-- that the team issued on its official Weibo account on June 6
after losing to the lowly Uzbekistani national team. When the
team neglected to apologize for the loss to Thailand, the pace
of angry posts to the earlier apology quickened: By Tuesday
evening, it had been re-tweeted more than 130,000 times and
generated more than 38,000 almost universally angry comments.
Among the most popular was “dissolve it” -- referring to the
team -- and variations thereof.

Arguably, however, nothing said on Weibo approached the
level of outrage of what was published in China’s mainstream,
Communist Party-owned news media. The Sunday sports pages of the
Beijing News announced, “1 to 5! Humiliating defeat to a Thai
youth team writes a new chapter in the national team’s ‘history
of shame’ and defeat.” Xinhua, the state-owned news agency,
broke down the game for its English-language edition: “Poor
possession, poor team work and most of all no fighting spirit
resulted in the most humiliating defeat for years for China’s
national soccer team.” Notably, prominent Communist Party-owned
news media sources didn’t mention the behavior outside the
stadium.

What is it about a lousy soccer team that inspired such
anger across Chinese society? On June 17, Southern Metropolis
Daily, a highly independent, Communist Party-owned newspaper in
Guangzhou, wrote in an editorial: “June 15, 2013, is destined to
be known as a dark day in the history of Chinese soccer.” It
went on to explain that soccer -- as the world’s top sport --
has always been viewed as “a platform for displaying national
strength.” The piece pointed to “Europe, Japan and Korea, whose
standard of soccer rose with national power.” In China, where
Japan and Korea are viewed as rivals (if not outright enemies)
there’s a clear implication: In soccer, at least, China has
failed where Japan has succeeded.

If anything, things may have gotten worse. In 2011, when
the Chinese were eliminated from the qualifying rounds for the
2014 World Cup by war-ravaged Iraq, it was regarded as the
latest worst loss in the nation’s soccer history. But a loss to
Thailand, a country that most Chinese view as a geopolitical
inferior subject to Chinese influence, kindles popular
frustration at the gap between China’s rise to the top of the
geopolitical heap over the last decades and the lack of what
some Chinese view as tangible benefits for themselves.

Southern Metropolitan Daily, in its Monday editorial,
explained this distance: “In this century China and its economy
have experienced a leap in strength, and ‘the rise of China,’
has inadvertently become a consensus at home and abroad. In
contrast, looking back at Chinese football, except for the 2002
World Cup it’s spent 11 years heading step by step into the
abyss. The rising national strength set against a decreasing
level of football will lead to growing dissatisfaction among
large numbers of fans. It could be said that the ‘Hefei fiasco’
was just the fuse connected to a public opinion environment
ready to explode at any time.”

What does that bomb look like when it explodes? Over the
weekend, a faux dialogue between a Chinese soccer fan and a Thai
one appeared on Sina Weibo, in various versions and edits. Its
origin is uncertain, but not its popularity: It has been
forwarded and tweeted thousands of times. In it, the Thai fan
refers to many of the most intractable issues in contemporary
China:

“China: We have 5,000 years of history!

Thailand: Your team was abused 5:1.

China: We have an area of 9.6 million square kilometers.

Thailand: Your team was abused 5:1.

China: One in every five people in the world is Chinese!

Thailand: Your team was abused 5:1.

China: Can’t we talk of something other than men’s soccer?

Thailand: You’re beaten down by local government officials
every day.

China: ……

Thailand: You eat toxic food every day.

China: ……

Thailand: You suck in toxic air.

China: ……

Thailand: Even if you struggle for a lifetime you can’t
afford a house.

China: Let’s continue talking about the soccer team, OK?

Thailand: Your team was abused 5:1.”

The flare-up in Hefei wasn’t the first riot in soccer
history, nor the first inspired by politics. But the anger it
inspired -- both from the people and from the voices of the
establishment -- is a reminder that in Chinese soccer, as in
Chinese life, expectations and reality are rapidly diverging
with uncertain, occasionally explosive, consequences.

(Adam Minter, the Shanghai correspondent for the World View
blog, is writing “Junkyard Planet,” a book on the global
recycling industry. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the author of this article:
Adam Minter at ShanghaiScrap@gmail.com.